


Pruning

by tinsnip



Category: Star Trek: Deep Space Nine
Genre: Cardassians, Enabran Tain - Freeform, Gardening, Gen, Mila Garak - Freeform, Tolan Garak - Freeform
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2014-06-29
Updated: 2014-06-29
Packaged: 2018-02-06 18:03:18
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 713
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/1867293
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/tinsnip/pseuds/tinsnip
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Our parents give us gifts. What we do with them is up to us. Sometimes we don't want them. Sometimes we don't even recognize them as gifts...<br/>Garak gardens and ponders little ironies.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Pruning

**Author's Note:**

> Kardasi translated as hovertext.

His hands are busy in the soil. There's much to do. Uproot here, rearrange there, and here a shoot is struggling… oh, yes, there's much to do. Without him, how would this garden survive?

He sings to himself as he works, and the garden sings back to him in scent and so'cam and soft rustling leaves. _Oh, yes. Yes, I hear you. You need me and I need you._

It's good to be needed.

It is a bit funny to think about how well he fits here. Within a moment of squatting in the dirt, he shifts from a creature of delicate habits and perfect clothing to one of earth and mud and dirty work. His carefully-manicured hands are suddenly blunt and square, converted to function as serviceable shovels, and he laughs to himself as he digs in the dirt like a busy odrun. It's a dissonance, but an enjoyable one. Strength isn't useful to a tailor, but to a gardener, it's key. He's strong enough, happily, to tug out a recalcitrant weed, to carry and lift and haul the stuff of life…

For that he has his mother to thank. Mila, with her strong build, her thick-fingered hands; Mila, who did what needed doing and made sure Elim knew how to do it too; Mila, who was happy to get her hands dirty…

But also he can arrange. He can place. He can step back, look, plan, and when he needs to be delicate, to rearrange just _so_ without disrupting the life around the troubled spot, well, his hands do it without thinking. They're maneuverable. They're clever. That's a gardener, and a tailor too. That's not Mila.

Tolan taught him to be a gardener. Tolan knelt with him in the soil, making obeisance to Cardassia, teaching him how to praise with flowers. Tolan taught him their habits, their needs…

But he'd taken to it so well, and that wasn't Mila, and it couldn't be Tolan. The thought feels like a betrayal… still, he knows it's truth. _I'm sorry, father-that-was._

It isn't a trouble, exactly, that niggling thought. It is, however, a mild source of bemusement, something to carry in the back of his mind as he does what's needed. It's off, it doesn't fit…

But it does no good to ruminate when he'd much rather be working. Here he can make things better. Just by the fence, for example, is a place where his intervention is required. A young tree, only a half-samlan tall, is shaded by an overhang of drooping czIc. It will grow past them one day, yes, but it could take years… and he could use a shade tree further over by the house, something to bend and sway…

Tools are used. The tree is extracted, moved, replanted. It takes an hour or two, time spent without thought in hard work under Ra'ajev's eye. He thanks Mila's strong back, her capable hands. He thanks Tolan's knowledge of how the tree will grow. They gave him what they had. _Our parents' gifts are our true legacy._

Hmm… That tree is shaped almost as he'd like it to be now… but if, as it matures, it grows into its customary over-turned bowl, it will block the light on the porch. Some shade is good. Too much is bad.

He catches up his shears, places them just so:

_Snip._

A bit of ointment on the exposed heart of the cut branches protects them. Now they'll curl into small stubs. Not quite as pretty to look at, certainly, but that's a small sacrifice to make for a better fit for the garden. Yes… yes. Satisfied, he pats the little tree's fuzzy crown.

"I'm sure you don't like me much at the moment, my friend, but you'll be much better for what I've done. I promise you'll… thank me later…"

Oh. Well, isn't that funny.

He looks at the replanted, injured tree. There is no question it will be stronger for what he's done today, and more useful, too. Strength and utility are unquestionably good things.

He sets that thought in his mind and lets it rub against his past, smiling at the dissonance scraping like claws on stone.

_Oh, my father. My Tain. Did you know you were a gardener too?_

**Author's Note:**

> Concept of the so'c courtesy of [bmouse](http://archiveofourown.org/users/bmouse/pseuds/bmouse).  
> Tolan Garak and his relationship to Elim courtesy of Andrew J. Robinson's [A Stitch In Time](http://en.memory-alpha.org/wiki/A_Stitch_in_Time).


End file.
